The Vintner's Vixen (River Hill Book 1) Read online

  He licked a smear of grease off of the base of his thumb, and she swallowed. “Crappy ones,” he said dismissively.

  “Can you be more specific?”

  He shrugged. “Shitty, generic ones is all I’ll say. The Winthrops had terrible taste. If you’re planning on setting yourself up with a boutique label, you’re not going to sell much.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Do I look like I have time to make wine?”

  He looked her up and down, and she felt her entire body get hot. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you?”

  “No. I have a target opening date for the B&B, and I have a lot of renovating to do to get there.”

  “Good luck with that.” He popped the last bite of taco into his mouth and put his hands on the table, getting ready to push himself up to leave.

  “Wait! Just hear me out.”

  He sighed. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to grow grapes on my land.”

  He froze. “What?”

  Now that she finally had his real, focused attention, the words came tumbling out. “It doesn’t make up for what happened today, but you’re going to be replanting anyway, right? I have extra land that I’m not using that’s apparently the right kind for growing vines, you have the expertise to grow them.” He opened his mouth, and she held up a hand. “You’d get the grapes. I don’t want them.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You’re offering me free land?”

  “I didn’t say free.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. You just cost me a fortune.”

  “Technically, the Winthrops did. It’d be pretty sticky to come after me, legally.” She shrugged, feigning as much indifference as she could in the face of the prospect of a lawsuit and legal fees she definitely couldn’t afford, even if she won. “You might win. I might. It’s probably not worth it to either of us to fight it out, especially if we can work something out.”

  “Work something out?”

  God, even the language of Hollywood stuck with her. She sounded like the producer who’d offered her a role as an extra in the new X-Men movie if she’d let him touch her feet. “It’s a business deal, but I’m not trying to make money off you, honestly. I’m thinking a minimal leasing fee and maybe some wine for the B&B once in awhile.”

  His long fingers drummed on the table as he thought. “The old vines would have to be cleared away.”

  She’d thought of that already. “If you’ll take care of planting new ones, I’ll pay to have the old ones cleared.”

  “That back hill of yours does have some unusually good sunlight hours,” he said thoughtfully. She nodded, trying to look like she knew whether that was relevant or not. He didn’t seem fooled. “You want this in writing?”

  “Please. Gentlemen’s agreements don’t really seem to fly these days.” Her tone was a little drier than she meant it to be, but his lips quirked into a small smile anyway. Was that a sense of humor peeking through? God, she hoped not. He didn’t need anything to make him more attractive – and she didn’t sleep with anybody she signed a contract with.

  The next morning, Angelica sat in her kitchen, resting her laptop on the butcherblock countertop of the temporary island she’d brought from her home in L.A. It was the most level thing in the room. She didn’t relish trying to balance her coffee mug on the uneven tiled countertops leftover from the seventies. She flipped her browser to the tab she’d left open and admired the pristine Carrera marble countertops for sale at a wholesaler in South San Francisco. She was definitely getting ahead of herself.

  Her phone chirped, indicating a video call was coming in. She picked it up and smiled. “Hi, Dad,” she said when the screen cleared to reveal her father’s worn face.

  “I’m here, too!” Her mother’s face popped into view, sideways, as she’d shoved her head under her husband’s shoulder to fit into the tiny camera screen.

  “Hi, Mom. What’s up?”

  “We wanted to see how you’re settling in,” her father said.

  “How’s the weather?” her mother asked.

  “The weather is perfect, as always,” Angelica answered. “And I’m settling in fine. No issues.” She crossed her fingers mentally, remembering the contract that her countertops had momentarily distracted her from reviewing. “How are you two?”

  “Never mind us, honey, things are always the same here,” her mother said. “Although I do have a new painting to show you. It might look nice in your B&B!”

  Her mother was an incredibly talented artist who remained intentionally obscure by making her paintings available only to people she knew and respected. While it wasn’t the most effective distribution strategy in terms of profits, it meant her work was valued and appreciated. Jai’s office was lined with her paintings, and he frequently got exorbitant offers to buy them from bigwigs and celebrities alike. As far as Angelica knew, he hadn’t sold any of them. Neither had Mom, although she could easily have made a living from her work. Instead, she was happy teaching kindergarten.

  “I’ve got a place in the foyer waiting for a painting of yours, Mom,” Angelica replied. “And if you come visit when the place is finished, you can decorate the whole thing.”

  “We have to wait to visit until it’s finished?” her father asked. “I have some ideas for your booking software. I was hoping I could come help you test them out.” Life at the accounting firm apparently didn’t take any time away from his hobby of researching everything in the entire world.

  “And I’m pretty good with spackle,” her mother added. “Just say the word!”

  Angelica rolled her eyes. “I just got the keys yesterday, you two. Cool your jets!”

  “As if you don’t already have a plan,” her mother scoffed.

  “I do, but I haven’t even cleaned the place. You’re not coming and staying in a guest room until I’ve at least had a chance to brighten them up a bit.”

  “How far is your new place from L.A., again?” Her parents rarely left their comfortable Massachusetts town, and her mother’s grasp of California geography was still slim after more than ten years of her daughter living there.

  “Pretty far, Mom.” The phone beeped again. Another incoming call. She was popular today, it seemed. “That’s Jai calling. Can I call you back later? I’ll take you on a video tour, I promise.”

  “Say hi to Jai for us!” Her mother loved Jai and the feeling was mutual. Angelica occasionally wondered if her parents visited to see her, or her agent and his husband.

  “I will. Bye!” She tapped the ‘accept call’ button. “Hi, Jai. Calling to tell me how awful my house is?”

  “Hello, beautiful.” He definitely wanted something. “Actually, I’m calling to take advantage of the awfulness of your house, specifically.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “I just had a very interesting conversation with somebody named Justin from the Renovation Network.”

  “I didn’t know you watched the Reno Network.”

  “Greg does.”

  “Of course he does.”

  “The point, my sarcastic sweetie, is that I mentioned your project, and just happened to have some of your headshots handy.”

  “Recent ones?” She was sick of being told she didn’t look like the girl from Clueless.

  “The newest ones, in all your lush glory.”

  “Lush glory? Really?”

  “They want to talk to you about following your renovation, Angelica. Series potential.”

  She caught her breath reflexively at those golden words. “Series?” She was done with Hollywood, though. Wasn’t she? “I don’t know, Jai.”

  “It’s not a movie role, Ang.” He knew her as well as she knew herself. “It’s just you, being you. And think of the publicity for your cute little hotel thing.”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what a B&B is. Greg asked me for recommendations just last month. I know where you went for your anniversary.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”


  “It was nice, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course it was, you have impeccable taste, blah blah blah. Are you interested?”

  She fell silent, and Jai let her think. She’d wanted this to be a new start, a whole new phase of her life. But was it so wrong to let the experience she’d built up of over a decade of on-camera work give her an edge now? Jai was right about the publicity. And maybe it was time for a little more honest self-awareness. When she hadn’t been disgusted by the behavior of the Hollywood bureaucracy, she’d enjoyed the work of being on camera. She hadn’t made a solid career out of nothing, after all. Maybe she really could combine what she had done before with what she wanted to do now. Imagining her mother’s reaction to seeing her daughter on Reno TV, she smiled. “Let’s do it.” She flipped her laptop’s screen back to the contract Noah had drawn up after they’d agreed on the details the night before and added her digital signature with a decisive click. “I’m in a contracting mood today. Send it over.”

  Clicking over to her email, Angelica waited for Jai’s incoming documents and suddenly wondered what Noah would think of camera crews next door. She’d bet her future Carrera marble counters that he would be … grumpy.

  Chapter Five

  Thump, thump, thump. Boom, boom, boom. Noah stared at the ceiling of his bedroom, the full moon illuminating a slanted path across the wall, as the sound of an unidentifiable pop song’s pulsating base line echoed through the crisp night air. For twenty minutes he lay still, willing the music to quiet, until he couldn’t take another second of it.

  Noah knew he had what many would consider questionable taste in music—preferring songs from his college days over anything current—but this was ridiculous. As he sat upright in his bed and ran a frustrated hand through his hair, he heard the faint whisperings of a female voice singing longingly about temptation over a man’s body.

  “Goddamnit,” Noah groaned, throwing the covers aside and swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress. He glanced briefly at the digital clock on his bedside table, glowing green in the dark, and groaned again. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock at night but he was about to be that guy—the one who was old before his time—the one who warned his new, gorgeous and exasperating neighbor about people needing to wake up early in the morning … even on the weekend. She’d been living next door for six weeks, and he’d seen her around town several times, but this was the first time she’d intruded on his sleep. Well, other than in his dreams, anyway. She was frequently naked in those. He hadn’t expected her to be a noisy neighbor, but he sure as hell wasn’t putting up with it. Angelica might not understand, but a farmer’s life—because farming was essentially what Noah did—was about early mornings and even earlier nights.

  Even as he pulled his well-worn jeans up over his naked skin and buttoned his soft, threadbare flannel over his chest and then shoved his feet into a pair of flip-flops, Noah could predict he was about to embark on a fool’s errand. Alas, he’d already set himself upon the course, and if anything, he was a man who saw things through.

  Exiting the house, his trusty pooch Molly raised her head and peered at him, one eye open. “Hey here, girl,” Noah whispered. “It’s just me.”

  Hearing her master’s voice, Molly dropped her head back onto her paws and closed her eyes. For as pampered as she could be, once the temperatures soared above 70 degrees, his dog preferred to sleep outside under the stars, instead of inside with Noah. He couldn’t begrudge the desire—if Noah could get away with sleeping outside every night from April to October, he might too. Then again, he thought, I do love my thousand thread count sheets. Noah might have eschewed his privileged, San Francisco upbringing, but he’d been unable to let go of a few of life’s most basic luxuries: a downy feather mattress topper and Frette bed linens among them. Good wine and whiskey were two others.

  Hopping into his beat up pickup truck—see, he didn’t need everything to be fancy— Noah inched down the long, winding drive that separated his property from the Winthrop estate. Scratch that—Angelica’s place. He still didn’t know if she had what it took to remodel that old ramshackle house into something people would pay good money to spend a weekend in, so he cautioned himself not to get too used to thinking of it as hers. Didn’t allow himself to think too hard about the possibilities of the hillside vineyard he’d already planned in his head over the last few weeks.

  Zinfandel wasn’t what Noah was known for—after all, people flocked to Stonewell Vineyards for his award-winning Pinot Noir and Bordeaux blends—but that rocky soil with several hours of hot, direct sunshine a day were just itching for the types of vines that could withstand such harsh elements. Noah knew in his heart that with the contract Angelica had signed giving him access to her land, he could do something extraordinary. It might not make up for the loss of his vines in the near term, but in the long term, it could prove a watershed moment in his career.

  His father had never bothered with Zinfandel; a shame really, since the climate in this revered valley was perfect for it. Hell, the old Italian families who’d come to River Hill in the 1880s from Piemonte, Tuscany, and Campania had recognized those grapes—cousin to their homeland’s beloved Sangiovese—would flourish on the slopes leading down to the river. And now, if everything went according to plan, it was Noah’s turn to put his stamp on the varietal.

  Alas, he didn’t want to get too ahead of himself. Noah still didn’t know much about Angelica, but he knew people and if she stuck it out here for even a year, he’d eat his flannel. That pink tool belt she’d worn during their first meeting had told him all he needed to know about his new neighbor, and nothing he’d learned of her in the weeks since had changed his mind about her skillset. Or lack thereof. And when you considered what Sean had told him about her former career in Hollywood, Noah would bet good money this venture was a hobby for her and nothing more.

  So he was trying not to dream the dream.

  Trying and failing.

  As Noah’s Ford inched its way down the long drive, going slow so as not to kick up too much dry dirt, he cast his eyes over the hillside in question and tried not to let his imagination run wild. But it wasn’t too hard to put the brakes on his plans when his headlights flashed over the source of the noise that had kept him up well past his bedtime: Angelica, sitting in front of a blazing fire on the weathered patio in front of the west wing of her house, surrounded by five—no, make that six—men.

  Hopping out of the cab of his truck, Noah stalked across the yard to stand across from her, hands on his hips. “Seriously?” he asked, his voice rising with annoyance.

  Noah liked to consider himself a self-possessed sort of person, and so he knew exactly why he was irritated. Sure, initially it’d been the music that had pulled him from his bed, but now? The spike of displeasure he felt was entirely down to Angelica’s cohorts. If it had been, say … he and his lifelong friends sitting around the fire with her, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But he didn’t know these men—didn’t like the look of them—so he was irritated Angelica was out here surrounded by a pack of red-blooded American males. And if the empty beer bottles were anything to go by, they were drunk males to boot.

  “Hello, Noah,” Angelica responded dryly, her eyebrow raised as she tipped a bottle back, her throat constricting with each swallow. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  Angelica chuckled. “Actually, I do. Not even midnight yet on a Friday night, if the clock in my kitchen is to be believed.” She set the empty bottle down next to her feet as one of the guys popped the cap on a new one and passed it her way.

  “Right,” Noah clipped, scrubbing a rough hand over his lightly bristled jaw. “The thing is, I have to be up at dawn tomorrow morning and I can hear this damn music all the way over there.” He pointed into the distance, toward his home.

  Angelica threw back a sip of her newly opened beer, and Noah had to force himself not to watch, to not think about what her throat
would look like swallowing down something else. “Have to or want to?” she asked archly.

  Noah clenched his jaw and bit back a nasty retort. He didn’t know what it was about this woman, but she got under his skin in a way no one ever had before. She’d been in River Hill for going on six weeks now and each interaction they’d had—save a few—had been an exercise in extreme patience.

  “I like waking up at dawn. And I don’t like the idea of having to switch up my routine to accommodate your loud parties.”

  One of the guys snickered, but when Noah shot him a glare, he immediately dropped his eyes to the fire and poked at it with a long stick. Meanwhile, Angelica glanced around the circle, taking in her companions before letting out a throaty laugh. “He thinks this is a party, gentlemen.”

  The guy closest to Angelica smirked and, with his eyes trained on Noah in a challenging stare, shook his head slowly. He knew that look. This guy thought Noah, with his flannel and his truck, was a stupid country yokel who he could talk down to. The mistaken impression didn’t bother Noah. He loved River Hill and wasn’t ashamed to call this place home. What he disliked, however, was the automatic dismissal, the snide, judgmental sneer the man had adopted. It was a sneer he knew well, having grown up surrounded by men and women who were equally as disapproving as this guy.

  Noah raised his chin in defiance. “You got a problem?”

  The two men stared at each other for several long, tense seconds before Angelica’s tinkling laughter brought Noah back to himself. He didn’t consider himself one of those aggressive alpha males that had to prove his manhood and virility in some ingrained evolutionary stand-off when he encountered another male skulking around his woman—

  Wait, what? His woman?

  In the blink of an eye, Noah understood exactly why he was standing there, his chest puffed out like some kind of avenging peacock. Sure, he and Angelica had gotten off on the wrong foot, but since she’d taken possession of the house, she’d been perfectly pleasant—exasperating, but charming. And he’d always, from the very second they’d met, thought she was the most stunning woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Noah was any number of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. As a winemaker, he knew a little something about chemistry … and right now he felt like an absolute fool for not having put two and two together sooner. This wasn’t hate; it was chemistry. He didn’t dislike Angelica. He might even like her—a lot. Unfortunately, what he didn’t like was the idea that she might not like him back—that she might be fucking one of these guys instead of him.